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Pstrings are Comparable

All the comparison operators that work on ints and doubles also work on pstrings. For example, if you want to know if two strings are equal:

  if (word == "banana") {
    cout << "Yes, we have no bananas!" << endl;
  }

The other comparison operations are useful for putting words in alphabetical order.

  if (word < "banana") {
    cout << "Your word, " << word << ", comes before banana." << endl;
  } else if (word > "banana") {
    cout << "Your word, " << word << ", comes after banana." << endl;
  } else {
    cout << "Yes, we have no bananas!" << endl;
  }

You should be aware, though, that the pstring class does not handle upper and lower case letters the same way that people do. All the upper case letters come before all the lower case letters. As a result,

Your word, Zebra, comes before banana.

A common way to address this problem is to convert strings to a standard format, like all lower-case, before performing the comparison. The next sections explains how. I will not address the more difficult problem, which is making the program realize that zebras are not fruit.
Home Strings and things Pstrings are Comparable

Last Update: 2005-12-05